I'm intrigued, in a kind of fuzzy, half-thought-out way, to know if anyone here deliberately tries to pollute the information that's held and gathered about you - in the same way that aluminium 'chaff' is used to confuse radar. I did a cursory search around this and couldn't find much? I'm thinking along the lines of a kind of 'personal spam' that interferes with targeted marketing, but not sure exactly how that would work.

Is it even possible to render the information collected about you by marketeers worthless - or are the bastards just too clever?

Would this even be something worth bothering about - do people feel that this kind of thing is more or less benign (I veer between 'not' and 'ambivalent')? ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324476#Comment_324476
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324476#Comment_324476Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:49:34 -0600allana
TED talk about tailored search results yesterday. You're right, it does seem like it's been going on for years, but it really is easy to forget. The speaker throws it out at the end that he's probably got Facebook and Google programmers in the audience and that they had better start taking their responsbility as regards "uncomfortable content" seriously. (I actually get genuinely pissed off, now that I've made a Youtube ... something [not channel; I just subscribe to two dudes] that's linked in to my gmail address, that I can't log out of Youtube and then go back later without it automatically re-logging me in. I can't seem to delete my Youtube something, even though it'd be much easier and less invasive for me to just bookmark those two dudes's channels.)

As for that article, I'm probably less annoyed by the product-profiling and more annoyed by the fact that they try to exploit people at their weakest (e.g. in the first anecdote about exhausted new parents). And genuinely laughing about the pregnancy algorithm identifying a 16-year-old girl. Bam.

As for your actual question! This would probably be a great project for someone to code. Something like an IP proxy, but for accounts. You can set up a half-billion google accounts now, and probably automate that process, and route each action of your browser through a different one. Probably pretty data-heavy, but it could be done. Alternatively, have some little side-browser-routine browsing the web at random in your name. And that "randomness" could be tailored, too. It could even be beneficial just to have dummy searches going off all the time according to what you *like*, not just what you find yourself doing every so often. If your one-recipe-search-a-week isn't enough to get cool food ideas in your feeds, you could dummy-search some of the tags on your favourite websites, just to stay current.

I find the manipulative aspects of this really disturbing as well. I'm not fussed by targeted ads particularly (I quite like that I get ads for guitars everywhere), but the pregnancy example (I don't know - there are versions of that story in the UK too, so not sure if it's apocryphal) is kind of uncomfortable reading. I heard a talk from a loyalty marketing guy where he used an example of someone who'd stopped buying into the cake category, probably on a diet. They bombarded her with offers for cakes, and she cracked after a couple of months. Everyone around me laughed, I felt sick - you can imagine beyond that 'amusing' anecdote to someone's personal struggle, deliberately torpedoed by a bunch of clever algorithms. I don't think they're allowed to do that with, say, alcohol, but doing it with anything potentially unhealthy seems morally reprehensible.

That sounds like an intriguing coded solution - imagine that would be against the TOS of providers like Google given the value of the information to them and the risks posed by people trying to defeat its capture... It does sometimes feel like a bit of a Faustian deal using google/facebook et al.

Am also intrigued by strategies to physically defeat loyalty data capture - ie, how can you defeat that whole 'intrusive' marketing that the article talks about? I guess if you were aware, you'd separate purchases that triggered that kind of thing into separate transactions with different payment cards and loyalty cards, or pay with cash. But it would take a great deal of effort and planning, and potentially a knowledge of company structures and data protection legislation to understand which organisations could share and pool your data.

As the technology evolves they're talking about using image capture and facial recognition to work out your gender and potentially age as you go down an aisle and then deliver targeted offers to you at point of sale - I may have read way too much William Gibson here, but will we see the emergence of urban camouflage clothing (hooded tops with multiple faces on maybe) and people changing their appearance to defeat these systems? In the same way that people obscure their number plates to foil speed cameras?

At what point do a significant number of people become irked/concerned enough to actively resist these kind of technologies? ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324514#Comment_324514
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324514#Comment_324514Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:31:08 -0600sneak046

people changing their appearance to defeat these systems? In the same way that people obscure their number plates to foil speed cameras

And on personal-data chaff , I run a couple of infomorphs called weavrs that have their own blogs and twitter accounts but there would be nothing stopping someone using them in a way you suggest. German-based writer Marcus Brown has some interesting ideas regarding digital identity ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324531#Comment_324531
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324531#Comment_324531Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:36:03 -0600FlabyoSo hey, the computer can't tell who it was, but unsurprisingly very few courts actually rely on them for convictions.

It's possible to go too far along the 'if I defeat the machines I can do what I want!' line of thinking. ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324546#Comment_324546
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324546#Comment_324546Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:18:48 -0600sneak046Of course if the make-up is too outre you could always carry the CCD-Me-Not umbrella, part of the sentient city survival kit/ ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324564#Comment_324564
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324564#Comment_324564Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:19:47 -0600Osmosis
Of course, the makeup required to defeat computer facial recognition is pretty distinctive. And easilly recalled by actual human beings, whose observations will stand up in court way ahead of any pretend machine ID machine.But will they remember your face, or your dazzle pattern? ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324569#Comment_324569
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324569#Comment_324569Sat, 18 Feb 2012 05:18:37 -0600shannon.gilly.3Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324594#Comment_324594
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324594#Comment_324594Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:01:14 -0600Bombus Hortorus@Flabyo - I wasn't thinking specifically about avoiding criminal liability (although that's an interesting strand too), more about resistance to marketing/commercial manipulation. That poses an interesting point though - at the moment, any effort to disguise oneself physically to foil CCTV would most likely be perceived by the majority negatively, I think - 'if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide'. At some stage though, if physical recognition becomes intrusive or far more commercial, will this change? ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324606#Comment_324606
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=324606#Comment_324606Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:29:03 -0600allana
As to "be[ing] perceived by the majority negatively," I think that espionage (or the television version of espionage) has been using that tactic for years. You can always pick a subculture costume that'll massively transform your appearance and perceived demeanour, depending on what it is you want to do. Something like dressing as a goth for a decade just so nobody'll know it's you when you finally put on a suit and do some serious corporate screwovers. (But, you know, clever. Actually I think the Occupy kids tried this one.)

Moral ambiguity, thy name is advertising. How are we to parse this advertising campaign in London in which an intelligent bus stop billboard only displays its content to women? You read correctly: the billboard has a camera that scans passersby and if one stops to look, it determines their sex and shows them a 40-second video if they are female. Males only get a link to the advertiser’s website.

Now, does it change things if the advertiser is Plan UK, a non-profit organization trying to raise money toward the education of girls in third-world countries? And they don’t show men because they wanted to give them “a glimpse of what it’s like to have basic choices taken away”? Whether you find this commendable or reprehensible, you have to admit that the technology and implications are more than a little interesting.

On topic, luckily(?) for me there is a well-published theology (irony?) professor at Oxford Uni with the exact same name as me so I already have my own google-chaff semi enabled.. ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=325114#Comment_325114
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=325114#Comment_325114Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:31:14 -0600government spy
Florida Representative, a 1969 Robert Mitchum Western, several sports people, ministers, and at least one country musician. Googling me is pretty difficult, and even background searches with some of my information is pretty hard. ]]>
Digital chaffhttp://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=325118#Comment_325118
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10500&Focus=325118#Comment_325118Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:33:57 -0600joe.distortam not even on the first page with my real name thanks to the same named star of the documentary MURDERBALL. ]]>